Neil Wiseman

Neil Wiseman, Reader in Computer Graphics at the University of Cambridge
Computer Laboratory died of cancer on Tuesday 13 June 1995 at his home in
Cambridge, England, after a year’s illness.

Born 19 May 1934, Cowlinge, Suffolk, England; died 13 June 1995,
Cambridge, England; Reader in Computer Graphics at the University of
Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Contributor for 30 years to computer
graphics and its applications, including display architectures, modelling,
rendering, interaction techniques, computer-aided design, graphic design and
computer animation.

Education:
BSc (Engineering), Queen Mary College, University of London, 1957; MS in
Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois, 1959; MA, University of
Cambridge, 1964; PhD, University of Cambridge, 1970.

Appreciation

The following appreciation was delivered by Peter Robinson at Neil Wiseman’s funeral on 26 June 1995:

I only had the privilege of knowing Neil Wiseman for the past 20 years,
first as his student and later as a colleague; there are many here whose
memories go back much further. We each have our own particular
recollections of his academic inventiveness and enthusiasm, his teaching
skills, his wisdom and gentle humanity, and especially his sense of humour.
Working with Neil was never dull. I would like to share a few cameos from
his life with you now.

Neil showed an early technical aptitude and in 1950 he joined the Pye
electronics company in Cambridge as an apprentice, which was to prove a
regular path for engineers into the University’s Mathematical Laboratory in
the 1950s and 1960s. At the time, television was just becoming fashionable
after the suspension of transmissions during the second World War. The
technological challenge and the supply of war surplus components proved
irresistible to an enthusiast like Neil and he built his own television
receiver. Indeed, it was a colour set, and the colour was green. This was
because the only cathode-ray display tubes that were readily available were
war surplus radar tubes. These had the further disadvantage that they had a
fairly long-persistence phosphor; once part of the screen had been
illuminated it continued to glow for several seconds. This meant that any
movement in the picture became seriously blurred. However, it worked.

At home, this enterprise had a further challenge in the absence of mains
electricity, which Neil duly solved by installing his own generator. This
was not quite as stable as might be desired, so even static pictures became
blurred as they drifted across the long-persistence tube. But it was
television, and the neighbours in rural Suffolk overcame their natural
suspicion of what looked dangerously like witchcraft to gather round and
watch the live outside broadcasts of the Queen’s Coronation.

Spurred by this success, Neil enrolled in 1954 to study Engineering at Queen
Mary College, London, and duly graduated in 1957. During this time he
started working for the Mathematical Laboratory during vacations, notably on
the construction of the high speed photo-electric paper tape reader. He
also brought with him plans for the long-persistence television and in due
course the design was copied and several were built in the laboratory.

Neil’s talent was easily recognised and it was arranged that he should go
for two years to the University of Illinois to study for a Masters degree in
Electrical Engineering. Work there on the Illiac had much in common with
the Cambridge approach and Neil joined a series of distinguished emissaries
– Wheeler, Gill, Douglas – who had all spent time there following Maurice
Wilkes’ visit in 1950. It was there that he published his first paper,
filed his first patent and began to develop a taste for teaching as a
graduate assistant.

On his return, there was the problem of National Service. Neil had seen
enough of crashed aeroplanes in East Anglia during the war to develop a
fervent distaste for all things military. In the event the problem was
solved by his working for two years as the Head of the Advanced Circuits
Group at Elliott Brothers, investigating new radar technologies. It was at
Elliott’s that he started working with tunnel diodes, which showed great
promise as a high speed technology.

Then, in 1961, after 10 years of intermittent contact, he finally joined the
staff of the Mathematical Laboratory as Chief Engineer. He continued
working with tunnel diodes and constructed a prototype store capable of
running at 250 megahertz, a speed which would be impressive today and was
phenomenal then. Construction with tunnel diodes was a tricky business and
wiring such high speed circuits required new techniques. Neil investigated
a form of printed wiring on glass substrates – a sort of precursor of
integrated circuits – which involved etching with powerful solvents, some of
which were brewed specially on the premises. This led to Neil securing for
the laboratory a Customs and Excise licence for running a private
distillery. I understand that its use was not entirely academic.

However, Neil’s interests were broad – one recent tribute quite properly
described him as a renaissance man – and he soon found a new challenge with
the arrival of one of the world’s first mini-computers, the DEC PDP-7, and
its type 340 vector display. Neil designed a high-speed data-link to
connect this to the main Titan computer. This was duly commissioned and
probably counts as the world’s first distributed system. In any case, it
proved a valuable research tool for work on computer aided design, both for
mechanical components and for Neil’s own work on electronic circuits. The
Rainbow integrated CAD system combined electronic design, computer graphics,
data structures and the control of change in large bodies of data, interests
which have continued to challenge Neil’s students in the Rainbow Group ever
since. He also began to work on screen editors for text, anticipating the
ubiquitous word processor of today, and, later, a television camera was
connected to the PDP-7, anticipating multi-media.

By 1970 Neil had published 15 papers and 3 patents, had supervised three
students for doctoral dissertations, and was himself approved for a PhD
under the special regulations (through submission of published work). He
was appointed to a University Lectureship, and was immediately seconded to
the Cambridge University Press where he employed his experiences with the
PDP-7 display in a project to design and implement a computerised
type-setting system.

Returning to the Computer Laboratory in 1973, Neil picked up the threads of
the Rainbow work with the new PDP-11 computer and Vector General display,
and soon attracted a flock of research students. The Head of Department was
even heard to observe that, “Far too many students were opting to work with
Wiseman,” but Maurice Wilkes also spoke of Neil as the epitome of the adage
that, “If you want to get something done, ask a busy man.” Neil was always
busy but he always had time for his students; he was absolutely reliable
and dependable, thriving as his acolytes did too.

Neil was prodigiously successful as a research supervisor. At the last
count, he had supervised 40 successful students, who now hold a variety of
academic posts around the world and in research laboratories here and,
particularly, on the West coast of America. He was held in great affection
by his students and inspired a curious team spirit in them. His students
often took their holidays together, although I think that Carol and I were
the only ones to go so far as to marry each other.

The 1970s also saw Neil embark on his collaboration with David Kindersley, a
fruitful exploration of the mathematics underlying the aesthetics of
lettering. Every Saturday morning would find the two of them hunched over
the Vector General display slowly refining algorithms for typeface design
and letter spacing. He even set the Tripos examination papers one year
using the Laser Scan plotter, which resulted in an aesthetic delight
although the production process was something of a security nightmare.

In the 1980s Neil brought one of the first Apple Macintoshes into the
Laboratory. Many people regarded this funny little machine with pictures on
its screen as a bit of a joke, only useful for games. The fact that this
particular model had a faulty keyboard, causing each key to type the letter
next to it in the row, meant that it really was a bit of a joke, but Neil
saw an exciting new area for research and the Rainbow display project was
born, combining his enthusiasms for electronic design and computer graphics.

By this time Neil was running the Diploma course and looking after general
graduate admissions into the department. He cared about students and loved
teaching. When undergraduate teaching in the Laboratory was extended and
the opportunity arose to introduce a hardware laboratory for practical work,
Neil duly devised experiments, procured equipment, even negotiated for bench
space and the lab was established. It was an immediate success and
continues with only minor modifications today.

When a student survey criticised his lecturing he didn’t take umbrage as
many might have done, but set to work to organise his notes and improve his
presentation. Even this last term, when he was growing weaker, he still
insisted on coming in to deliver his beloved lectures on graphics. Only
when he was actually kept in hospital would he let me stand in for him. At
the end of the course he received a standing ovation and this year’s student
survey carries the usual complimentary remarks, only one student added a
caveat to the effect that “This refers to the part of the course lectured by
Dr Wiseman, not Dr Robinson.”

Other universities tried to tempt him with professorships, but Neil loved
Cambridge, the University and the Laboratory, and had no inclination to
move. In 1983 he became a Fellow of Wolfson College and in 1986 a personal
Readership in Computer Graphics was created for him.

Even his illness this past year could not suppress Neil’s enthusiasm for
work. As well as lecturing, he has continued to supervise his students and
to contribute to research projects on self-timed logic (actually using ideas
from the tunnel diode work of 30 years earlier) and on the autostereo
display and its applications in medicine. He endured his illness with great
dignity and even humour. When I visited him at home just after he had come
out of hospital for the last time, I happened to be wearing this jacket and,
although he was weak and in pain, Neil somehow found the energy to tease me
about the fact that I was unduly smartly dressed. He was Neil to the end.

When Roger Needham broke the news of Neil’s death to the laboratory, he
described Neil as being “of the fabric of the laboratory.” For over 40
years Neil has been focal to much of what has happened in the laboratory.
His door was always open, he was always ready to listen and to advise. I
have only realised this past fortnight how much I used to look forward to
hearing his voice along the corridor so that I could go and chat. But now
the door is shut and we have lost his wisdom, his humanity, his friendship.
I miss him deeply.

Today we say farewell to all that is mortal of Neil Wiseman, but his spirit
lives on. It lives on in over 70 research publications, in 40 PhDs around
the world, in hundreds of other graduate students and thousands of people
whose lives he touched. We are all the better for having known him. Thank
you, Neil.